NPR crushes dissent!

Eh, they're free to fire whoever they like, but I think if Cheap, er, Clear Channel fired a DJ for making anti-war statements there'd be a huge stink about it.

(Well, I dunno if Clear Channel has DJs anymore - it's all pretty much done by robots).

Ah, but it's OK for their on-air personalities to express their obvious bias.

This is what I hate about the whole PC thing: it's ostensibly about freedom of thought, but only if you think the *right* thoughts.

(Actually, that should be "the *left* thoughts.")

Testify.

I found that article difficult to read. If I understand correctly, they are slamming NPR for having a bias, while showing their own bias at the same time.

So, is having a bias good or bad? The firing (or not) of the DJ seems to only be a reason for writing thhe story at this particular moment.

"matters of a controversial nature"

Kinda scary when patriotism is considered "contoversial"

Can we get an entry on how Kofi Annan is meeting today, and how he's announced a Pakistani as his choice to run post-war Iraq? A Pakistani? From Pakistan. Pakistan. A country currently being ruled by a military General who in 1999 led a coup against the legal government and then suspended the Constitution. Following this, Gen. Musharraf declared himself President. In a "referendum" held on April 30, 2002, Musharraf's reign was extended by five more years. A citizen of a country with a government like that has been named by Annan to be the likely administrator of any future U.N. authority in Iraq.

Facts from: [CIA World Fact Book]

What did you expect from the Lesbian Sweater-Vest Network?

Actually, the licensee of the station is Eastern Michigan University. Under FCC rules, ultimate editorial control is supposed to remain with the licensee, even if they are affiliated with a national network. (Clear Channel owns all of its station licenses, so that is different.) So this is really a case of stupid leftist academic hypocracy, rather than stupid Nihilist Public Radio hypocracy.

Story on Annan here.

NPR is publicly funded. Is this ILLEGAL crushing of dissent?

One of the ironies of this story is that Hughes, whose airname is Thayrone, is known for airing one of the finest r&b, blues and roots rock shows on radio, and is exactly the kind of thing that NPR stations claim is their forte - the kind of music that isn't usually played on commercial radio. If I recall the story in yesterday's paper correctly, Hughes refused to interrupt his show for NPR news because he claims they are biased. He's been fired and rehired at least a couple of times by the same station. His job there was part time, airing his show once a week on Saturday nights.

This is last week's news. Here are a couple of articles from the mainstream press. (NewsMax is not, and has never claimed to be, an unbiased news source.)

http://www.detnews.com/2003/metro/0304/04/d01-127872.htm

http://www.detnews.com/2003/metro/0304/03/a05-126999.htm

"What did you expect from the Lesbian Sweater-Vest Network?"

That caused me to shoot coffee out of my nose.

Which is sort of interesting, considering I haven't had any coffee today.

IIRC the guy refused to run NPR news breaks at their scheduled times, saying that nobody wanted to hear NPR news when they could hear Fox news. My guess is that people tuned to an NPR station probably would want to hear NPR news.

Speaking of NPR, Bloomberg says that NPR is reporting that the 101st has found rockets with Sarin and Mustard Gass in the warheads - how did NPR scoop the Command Post!

NPR didn't scoop CP - http://www.command-post.org/archives/004420.html

"We have a policy that our announcers don't express opinions on matters of a controversial nature, {unless they are liberal}"

But beside the point, why is this war considered controversial? If 75 percent more or less are now suppoting the war, how does that make it controversial? I guess for something to be considered non-controversial there must be what, 95-99 percent support for it???

While I agree that NPR is slanted well to the left, how can you decry bias by linking to NEWSMAX with a straight face?

Thanks for the alternate links to this story.

It sounds like the guy is a strong personality and he managed to make his manager mad. I don't see that this necessarily has much to do with NPR (NewsMax rant notwithstanding). It was the station managers' decision.

"It wasn't my intention to mess with the station manager," he said. "It's only been my intent to do crazy cool radio in America."

It'd be one thing if this guy were hired to present news and opinions and was fired because the station didn't like this news and opinions he was presenting, but that's not the case. His job was to play music and run the station's news breaks and promos. I mean, wouldn't a network news anchor be fired if instead of presenting the news he decided to play his favorite Beatles record?

Three cheers to JD and Tom.

I used to work at the NPR station down the street from WEMU. This guy desperately wants to work at a station where he can play whatever he wants whenever he wants. Great, but WEMU is not that station.

There are plenty of student and community stations that would love to have him volunteer there.

This is NOT about NPR being pinko and limiting PRO Bush comments. Please. ITs about one loose cannon who wanted to be a baby about a grown up job.

People get fired in radio all the time for not doing what management wants. Just ask Howard Stern.

No one spins these firings as Anti- anything except wacko, inaccurate, Right-wing sites like News Max.

Sixth post by Politicaobscura that is not factual. And actually outright bulldinky

The person cited did not work for NPR in any way but for the University of Michigan. This story has nothing to do with NPR other than the michigan station carried some NPR programing. How is a decision they made relevent to NPR which is a suppier of some small portion of some of their news?

Grow up and stop posting meaningles crap here. Is Fox Al-Jazeera because it carried al-Jazeera feed?

This story begs the questions that we the people should be required to fund NPR or the NEA for that matter - we should not, bias or otherwise.

The secondary issue suggesting there is no bias is crazy. NPR, like ABC, CBS, NBC et al., all have bias, NPR/ABC may in fact be the worst. The rub is that they think they offer real balance.

The third issue is whether the guy should be fired. When it gets right down to it, we don't have all the facts to determine whether or not he should have been fired.

I know NPR is funded by taxpayer dollars, but who's taxpayers? The Saudis?

Not sure whether this guy should have been fired or not, but I do look for a little balance in the reporting on the war and it's tough to find in the US media. I find British and Canadian media help. Majority of people in the world have a bias against this war in the first place.

I agree with whowever noticed that "politicaobscura" has been posting stupid stories, often with notations that are not based on facts. This story is almost two weeks old, it fakes the information from the AP report it is based on, it says a customer of NPR firing one of its employees is an act by NPR. It says nothing about bias at NPR but it says volumes about whiner who is perfectly happy to place outright lies here to grind his own axe.

THANK you, World Traveler!

As my Grandaddy (one of the wisest men I have ever known) once told me, "Least said, soonest mended." And added thoughtfully from the vantage of a memory eighty years long, "The first ten news stories are usually wrong. Come back and look again in a week."

1) NPR did not fire this guy. Eastern Michigan University did.

2) They didn't fire him because he said something they didn't like; they fired him because he didn't follow the station director's program when he cut off the hourly news updates.

3) I used to live there, and the show--Bone Conduction--is really fucking great. A real gem in a growing wasteland of pre-programmed corp-pop. He's been fired before; I'll bet he's back again later.

4) NPR is partially funded by the gov't but it's mostly private sponsorship that keeps it going. My local station is over 50% funded by listeners alone. The listeners at WEMU therefore are the real funders and if they weren't getting the hourly news updates that they thought they paid for, then they probably complained and legitimately so.

5) OT--All this carping about NPR having bias seems disingenuous. In my opinion, one hears near the full spectrum of voices on NPR. If that seems like a bias to you because you're not just hearing your opinions echoed 100% of the time then maybe you're not as secure in them as you'd like to think. And don't forget NPR's President came there from heading up Voice of America, our official overseas propaganda organ. Don't get me wrong, VoA presents solid stuff, but let's call a spade a spade.

Bear in mind that NPR's ombusdman recently all but admitted that their war coverage was biased.

http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2003/030314.html

There seems to be an imbalance of anti-war voices on NPR, thus proving Mr. Krengel's point…Even the tone of pro-war voices on NPR seems to be filled with self-doubt and subtle if anxious reasoning.

But what seems to be missing from other NPR's commentaries/interviews is the unabashed and unconditional support (and there is lot of it) for the administration.
…
Whenever that opinion is heard on NPR as it did when NPR interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell, NPR receives e-mails by the score, all asking: ‘NPR! How could you?’

Part of the problem for NPR and for many listeners who look to us to reinforce their opinions is the range of "acceptable" opinion. Radio is a unique and intensely personal medium. People listen, in my opinion, in order to recognize an aural landscape that they know and feel is theirs. When they hear ideas or voices with which they disagree, they can feel a sense of betrayal.

That puts NPR in an awkward position. As an audio companion, NPR needs to remain recognizable to its listeners; but as a news service, it needs to present a range of opinions that reflects reality -- no matter how uncomfortable that reality may be.

Journalists at NPR also need to understand that the range of ideas is not there to comfort them either. They need to choose a broader range of opinion and ideas with which they may personally disagree, but which serves and informs the listeners.

We all may have personal opinions about the events of the day. So we should. That is our responsibility as citizens. But as journalists we have another obligation. And it is to try to make sure that opinions -- even those we may find personally unacceptable -- are given a fair hearing. NPR journalists must be prepared to question their own assumptions about why some voices get on the radio while others do not. Only then can we be sure that we are providing a sufficient range of opinions to insure an informed electorate.

Even at the risk of receiving more "NPR! How could you?" e-mails.